King Lear – review

Commanding presence … John Shrapnel, left, as King Lear, with Trevor Cooper. Photograph: Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

There is a sentimental myth abroad that if we could only minimise the role of these pesky directors with their quirky concepts, we could see Shakespeare whole. But, in spite of a strong central performance from John Shrapnel, Andrew Hilton's plain-text production at this much-praised venue leaves me craving the delights of an interpretative idea.

Fortunately, Shrapnel is a commanding enough presence to make up for the directorial deficiency, and is particularly fine in the play's opening and closing scenes. He presents us with a silvery autocrat smugly confident that everyone will play his affection-demanding game – which makes his sudden explosion of rage all the more chilling. Even the way he bangs Goneril's table demanding his supper makes you believe in his past "unruly waywardness". And, although I've seen actors plumb the depths of madness with more visible desperation, Shrapnel never relinquishes Lear's anger. Even in the hovel, he raspingly refuses to be a separated from his "philosopher", Poor Tom. And the reiterated cry of "howl" when he enters with the dead Cordelia is not some extravagant wail, but a fiercely articulated order. What Shrapnel gives us is a Lear who, even if he learns through suffering, remains a king in his own mind.

A handful of supporting performances stand out. Julia Hills gives the gilded serpent Goneril a touch of real venom; Simon Armstrong is a vocally resonant Kent; and Trevor Cooper lends conviction to Gloucester's credulity. But, in the absence of any governing idea, I found myself dwelling on the notion that came up in a panel debate I was on in Oxford last week, that Shakespeare was an advocate of political honesty. To Shakespeare, dissimulation was clearly a vice. But so, too, was a lack of political guile. Witness the havoc caused by the "honourable" Brutus, the recklessly unhypocritical Coriolanus and, in this play, the gormless Cordelia (as the critic James Agate once called her), whose unswerving dedication to truth precipitates a cosmic tragedy.